Barnes & Noble Enters Big Tablet Market with Nook HD+ [HANDS ON]

Barnes & Noble has seen Amazon's plethora of Kindle Fire HD tablets and, potentially, raised the ante with a pair of new high-resolution, lightweight and affordably priced tablets: the Nook HD 7-inch and the Nook HD+ 9-inch.

That's right, Barnes & Noble just stepped into Apple iPad territory.

The big-size tablets are priced at $269 for the 16GB model and $299 for 32GB, so Barnes & Noble is deeply undercutting Apple on price and even beating the recently launched Kindle Fire HD line. The 7-inch Nook HD will list for $199 for the 16 GB model and $229 for the 32 GB tablet. Both sizes include micro SD slots for memory expansion (up to 64GB) and come complete with their AC chargers. Amazon charges extra for the Kindle Fire 7's AC adapter. Both Nook tablets are Wi-Fi only.

Barnes & Noble even took a different approach to introducing the tablet duo: no public invitations, no splashy event (unlike the original Nook Tablet launch). Instead, the company invited Mashable up to a tony downtown hotel loft in New York City to walk us through the reimagined 7-inch Nook HD tablet and completely new 9-inch Nook HD+.

The tablets include "HD" in their names because each features a high-resolution display that looks stunning at first glance. At 1,920 x 1,280, the HD+ resolution is slightly higher than 8.9-inch the Amazon Kindle Fire HD. Similarly, the 1,440 x 900 of the new Nook HD bests the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD and Google Nexus 7's 1,280 x 800 screens.

Like other new smartphones and tablets, these are laminated LCD panels that press together sensors and pixels (essentially removing air space) for a richer look both head-on and at 80-degree angles.

On the Design Front

Barnes & Noble also lavished a lot of attention on the look and feel of these tablets. Each is somewhat smaller and lighter than rival devices. The Nook HD, for instance, is a 7-inch device that's substantially narrower than the Kindle Fire HD. One reason is that the Fire offers a front-facing camera. Barnes & Noble made a conscious decision to manage the price of the Nook by leaving out the camera. Picture taking was not, according to Barnes & Noble executives, on the list of four things most people do with their current Nook Tablet. Most of their customers read, browse the web, email, engage on social networks and watch video. The Nook HD is also 2.8 ounces lighter than the Kindle Fire HD.

The larger Kindle Fire HD+ is, at 9 inches, slightly bigger than the Kindle Fire HD, but smaller than Apple's 9.7-inch iPad. And while, at 1,920 x1,280 pixels, it beats the Fire HD on resolution, it still pales in comparison to the larger retina display, which boasts 2,048 x 1,536. Barnes & Noble execs, however, contend that the pixel per inch on the two devices is not that far apart.

Even so, the Nook HD+ has far more in common with the Kindle Fire HD. Both devices are built on Android, version 4.0 (A.K.A. Ice Cream Sandwich). Just as with Amazon's line of Android tablets, Barnes & Noble pushed the Android interface way, way down.

New Interface

These new Nooks actually offer almost completely new interfaces that look nothing like Android on, say, the Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 or Google's own Nexus 7 tablet. The interface update also adds some nifty new features.

The most noticeable and welcome one may be the new profiles. Users can build profiles for, say, family members so that Mom's virtual bookshelf looks different than 7-year-old Junior's. The feature is, obviously, not just about looks. Each profile can have a completely different collection of content. So while Mom and Dad's have the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, junior's will have only children's books. These books can, however, be moved from one profile shelf to another.

For now, it's not clear just how deep these profiles go. Do they also apply to email, browser favorites and social accounts? We'll need to test the tablets to find out.

The two Nook HD tablets are also now more competitive with a key component of Amazon's content strategy: both support Barnes & Noble's new Nook Video service (introduced yesterday). Not only does the movie service promise movie and TV shows to rent or buy, but it integrates with Ultraviolet, the studio-supported digital video locker scheme that lets consumers buy movies once and access them pretty much any way they want — including through the new Nook HD tablets.

The Guts

Under the hood, both Nook HD tablets use the same Texas Instruments dual-core CPU; the 7-inch Nook HD is clocked at 1.4GHz, while the larger HD+ gets 1.5GHz of processing power.

Part of that power will be used to drive the new HD Magazine content. Barnes & Noble showed us onscreen samples of some of these periodicals on the HD+'s 9-inch display: they looked gorgeous. B+N even added a visual index so you can quickly scan through an issue to find that Miley Cirus article you really wanted to read. No word yet on how big these magazine files will be, though Barnes & Noble reps did remind us that the tablets have expandable storage. The company is also introducing catalogs to its collection of downloadable content.

There are other notable differences between Amazon and Barnes & Noble's offering. Amazon subsidizes the price of its Kindle Fire HDs with sleep-state ads. Barnes & Noble's HD tablets do not feature system-level ads. The company insists it will not "push" shopping the way Amazon does, though, in reality, B+N does not offer nearly as wide a variety of merchandize options as Amazon. The Nook HD devices will feature a somewhat more subtle way of encouraging commerce.

Users' home screens will offer "Your Nook Today." A click on the button will display suggested reading and viewing. Barnes & Noble also has nothing comparable to Amazon's attractive Prime program, which for $75 a year gets you free two-day shipping, the lending library and streaming movies.

Mashable got a little bit of hands-on time with each device. Both felt as light and comfortable to hold as promised, and we appreciate the visible "n" home button on the front of each device — it works just like the iPad's equally visible home button. The HD+ is, with its corner cutout, particularly distinctive. The 7-inch HD has two wider borders on each side, which gives it a unique look that consumers may or may not find attractive. That model, by the way, is also available in white. The larger tablet is slate only.

While Barnes & Noble was, as of this week, still finalizing the software, the book seller plans on shipping the Nook HD and Nook HD+ by the end of Oct. Just in time for the holiday buying season. How would you handicap Barnes & Nobles' chances for tablet success?